Afton 2.0

Last night while we were watching 30-Rock (gotta love Liz Lemon) we wondered outloud, "Who is that pleasant child wiggling around and entertaining herself on her playmat? Could that be our child?" While we were at our annual ward breakfast last March, a lady in line with us told us not to worry about the difficult things our kids would do as babies because one phase never lasted forever. She told us, "Each time I got to the point with my first kid when I thought 'I can't take ONE MORE DAY OF THIS!!!' -- she'd change." "So," she said, "just remember when she's driving you nuts, she'll change."

The month of August has turned out to be good for Afton -- or at least us -- and has she changed. First, she grew out of her newborn sized footed sleepers. (She's almost doubled in size being 11 lbs. now.) Then, she started eating faster. (Hurray! middle of the night feedings are wrapped up in 25 or 30 minutes now instead of an hour!) Then, she quit being a total crank pot from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night. (That's when we instituted the nightly bath -- it gave us at least a 30 minute break from the crying.) Then, she learned (more or less) how to fall asleep on her own. (Yesterday, I wrapped her in her blanket for her afternoon nap, placed her in her crib, kissed her goodnight, and she actually smiled at me and closed her eyes -- she didn't even cry before she fell asleep -- I almost didn't know what to do). As Tony put it last night, "It's almost as if someone sent out a patch to fix the problems with the original version..."

She has also taken to drooling and gnawing voraciously on people's fingers. (This video is mostly for the benefit of the grandparents...It's one of those things that's mostly cute if you either really love babies or already think this particular baby is cute anyway.) Here's to Afton 2.0!